


Shattered At Your Altar

by Art_Over_Matter



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Multiple, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:13:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29771181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Art_Over_Matter/pseuds/Art_Over_Matter
Summary: Azazel is dead. Sam has returned to law school, and Dean hunts alone. When he catches wind of Lilith's appearance out of hell, he starts to hunt her down, only to be visited by an angel who advises him otherwise. It takes time for Castiel to build Dean's trust in heaven's plan, and to do so he has to keep a few secrets--secrets about the fate of the world and about Sam Winchester.This is a story in three parts. Part I: Dean, Part II: Sam, and Part III: Castiel. I expect about 5 chapters of Dean's POV, 3 chapters of Sam's, and 3-4 chapters of Cas's. It's not an AU (though I make some minor alterations to the rules of the world) as much as a divergence from canon after Season 2, so Sam never dies and Dean never has to sell his soul. But it incorporates a number of themes and characters from later in the show as well.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester





	1. Faithless

Dean teases his boot laces out of their double-knot and tugs on the tongue of the shoe enough to slip it off and toss it in the corner. He does the same on the other side, noticing idly that the leather is horribly stained and creased, the sole coming apart from the heel. These boots have been dragged back and forth across the country, seen a lifetime’s worth abandoned floors and graveyard dirt. He’s had them about three years now.  
He chucks the other boot into the corner with the first and exhales, letting himself fall back onto the motel bed. He smells of smoke, sweat, dirt, and lighter fluid, but he’s too tired and too sore to change clothes and shower. He strips down to his t-shirt and boxers and crawls under the sheets.  
In minutes, he’s asleep. 

_“Sleep tight, love.”  
His mother leans down and kisses his forehead.  
“Don’t leave, Mom.” As she straightens, he sits up and takes her hand. “Stay with me, please?”  
“Oh, Dean, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Angels are watching over us, you know.”  
Dean shakes his head. “There are no angels. There’s no one. It’s just you. That’s why I want you to stay.”  
She smiles, gives his hand a squeeze. “You know I can’t.”  
“Then don’t lie to me about angels, at least,” he says dismissively, lowering his head. “Just tell me I’m alone.”  
“You have to be, Dean. There’s no other way.”  
“Mom—”  
She walks away, and even as he scrambles out of bed to stop her, the hallway bursts into flames, and his mother is consumed in the blaze._

× × ×

Dean tosses the machete into the back of the impala and swipes up the stained dishtowel there before shutting the false trunk. He scrubs the drying blood from his forearms, neck, and face, then pauses, wincing, to roll his left shoulder. He figures he probably tore something hacking the head off that ghoul. That’s always the hindrance, in this job. The injuries, coupled with the lack of health insurance or income to cover treatment.  
Back at his motel, he fills the plastic sack from the ice bucket with ice and balances it on his shoulder. He flips through channels on the old tube TV, but there are only about five of them and nothing interesting is on. The armchair smells of cheap cigarettes, the kind of stench that clings in his nostrils and permeates his clothes.  
With a sigh, he tosses the bag of ice onto the bed and undresses on his way to the shower, leaving a trail of bloodstained clothing in his wake. When he opens the bathroom door again, ushering a cloud of steam out into the room, he quickly discovers he has no clean clothes left.  
Cursing, towel still wrapped around his waist, he digs around in his duffle bag until he finds the least-dirty, least-smelly pair of jeans and t-shirt. He pulls the shirt on with some difficulty, because his shoulder seems to be getting worse.  
He slides his pistol into the holster clipped to the back of his waistband, tucked neatly into his jeans and easily covered by the Carhart jacket he puts on last. Then he stuffs everything into his duffle bag and heads out to his car. He throws the bag into the passenger seat—he’s gotten used to setting things there again—and runs a hand over the Impala’s hood as he walks to the driver’s side.  
“Gettin’ a bit dusty, Baby,” he says, brushing off his hands before pulling open the door and sitting down. The door hinge has started creaking again. “I really need to give you a once-over. I just don’t have the money for it right now. We’ll go to Bobby’s next week and I’ll get you all fixed up, okay?”  
He pauses briefly to consider this conversation he’s having with his car, then shakes his head and starts the engine.  
At the laundromat, he pitches all the clothes from his duffle bag into the washer and leaves the load to run, sitting on the backless bench in the center of the room and pulling out his phone. He scrolls slowly through his contact list, watching the names of hunters and random girls from bars travel up the screen. He sees some of the hunters’ names, some he hasn’t heard from in a while, and wonders who on this list is still alive.  
As he nears the S’s, he reverses and scrolls back up to find Bobby. The phone rings twice before he answers.  
“Dean.”  
“Hey, Bobby.”  
“You need me to look something up for you?”  
Dean chuckles, not entirely without shame. “Nah. I’m in Kentucky at the moment.” He glances around to make sure no one is around, then adds, “Just killed a ghoul that was terrorizing the locals. I wanted to see if you had anything goin’ on between here and there. I figured I’d head your way for a little R and R, but if you know of anything on the way, I’ll make a stop.”  
He can hear pages flipping. “Not that I’m seein’. If you want to make your way over here, I’m happy to have you for a night or two. Last time you said you were gonna visit, you detoured over to Wyoming and never made it here.”  
“I know. I’ll make it this time, I promise. I think I’m just…” He shifts on the bench. “I jacked up my shoulder, so I’d probably better take a little time off before I end up having to see a doctor.”  
“Uh-huh.” As usual, Bobby is buying none of Dean’s bullshit. “Have you talked to Sam anytime recently?”  
“I—I mean, I called him on his birthday.”  
“His birthday? That was four months ago, Dean.”  
“How did you know I hadn’t talked to him in a while?”  
“Because you sound lonely, you idjit. You been callin’ me a lot lately. And I’m glad of it, I just wanna make sure you’re okay.”  
Dean rubs a hand over his face and pivots to lie back on the bench. “I’m fine. It’s just… different, hunting without Sam or Dad. I guess got used to having my brother with me again.”  
Bobby sighs. “And he’s a damn fine hunter, too. It’s a shame not to have him around. But law school… it’s what he always wanted. He got out. Twice. If that doesn’t say everything—”  
“I know. And that’s part of why I haven’t been calling him, Bobby.”  
“He stopped hunting. He didn’t stop bein’ a Winchester.”  
“Isn’t it kind of the same thing?”  
“Look, I know you were raised in the life, and that ain’t easy. I can’t understand it, not fully. But you’re more than just a hunter, Dean, and there’s more to your family than hunting. The thing that killed your mom is dead. You can take a break once in a while.”  
“Says the guy who doesn’t go a day without a call from a hunter needing help on a case.”  
“Alls I’m sayin—”  
“I gotta go, Bobby. I’ll see you in a couple days. Let me know if you find anything urgent.”  
He hangs up and sets the phone on his chest, exhaling. Yellowed water stains stretch across the white panels of the ceiling. His shoulder aches.  
_And anytime you feel the pain, Hey Jude, refrain,  
Don’t carry the world upon your shoulders…_  
When the washer’s steady chugging comes to a stop, he throws his clothes into the dryer. The room quickly grows hot, an oppressive heat that smells sharply of dryer sheets. He sheds his button-up and pulls his t-shirt down over his pistol. He paces. He tries to make small talk with a woman bringing in a large bag of her kids’ laundry, but she won’t say more than a few words.  
He still has the song in his head—most of the time it’s Paul McCartney’s voice, but sometimes he can still hear the way his mother used to sing it as a lullaby, or hum it in the morning while making breakfast.  
_For well you know that it’s a fool who plays it cool,  
By making his world a little colder._  
At long last, the dryer blares its end-of-cycle alarm. Dean piles his laundry, unfolded, back into his duffle bag and packs up to return to the motel.

× × ×

_“Dad? Are angels real?”  
“What?”  
He knows better than ask questions when his father is drunk, but the question has been bothering him for days.  
“Where the fuck did you get an idea like that?” Dad asks over the stack of local newspapers he’s been combing for hours, a process slowed by his progressive intoxication.  
Dean shrugs, looks at the floor. “Mom always told me there were angels watching over us, but I don’t understand how an angel would let her—”  
“Dean.”  
His tone quiets Dean immediately. He tosses the newspapers onto the coffee table and leans forward, gesturing for Dean to come closer. Obediently but not without hesitation, Dean shuffles forward and his father takes him by the shoulders. Even drunk, eyes bloodshot and darkened by purple shadows, his gaze locks to Dean’s with a terrifying intensity.  
“There’s no such thing as angels.”  
“But Mom—”  
“She was wrong,” he snaps. He gives Dean a single, hard shake, enough to make his head snap back. “There is only evil out there. Only things to be afraid of. No one is going to protect you except you. No one’s going to protect your brother, either. That’s why you’re here.”  
Dean nods.  
“Don’t ask me stupid questions,” Dad says, abruptly releasing him. “Go see if Sammy needs anything.”  
He’s about to comply, but something compels him to turn back. He feels older, stronger now.  
“It should’ve been you.”  
His dad looks up, eyes flashing. “What did you say?”  
“You should’ve been the one protecting me, Dad.”  
John stands, sweeping an empty beer bottle off the table as if to throw it. “I died for you, you ungrateful little shit. I went to hell because of you.”  
“If you hadn’t gotten us into this mess in the first place, you never would have needed to. You would still be alive, you would be here with—”  
The bottle narrowly misses Dean’s head, shattering against the wall behind him. Dean recoils, but his father grabs the front of his shirt, yanking him forward.  
“You were the one who was stupid enough to get beaten to hell in that fight. You failed this family, Dean. You failed me, you failed your brother. Where’s Sam now, huh? Do you even know? Do you even know that he’s still alive?”  
John draws back for a punch, the kind that didn’t happen often but could drop Dean instantly, leaving his head spinning for minutes afterward. The blow meets his cheek, and—_

He’s thrown, flinching, into wakefulness. Eyes open wide, he can feel the throbbing in his cheek and jaw like an afterimage, and he searches for something in the dark room with which to ground himself. There’s a gun already in his hand but no one and nothing to aim it at. He’s on a couch under an old quilt that smells of moth balls, and he can just make out a detailed devil’s trap painted on the ceiling.  
He’s at Bobby’s. The air is cold—Bobby’s house is usually cold at night—and the film of sweat he worked up during the dream pulls the heat from his body, almost enough to make him shiver. He tucks the gun back under the couch cushion, then tugs the quilt up to his chin, exposing his feet to the cold in the process.  
He sighs and sits up, pushing the blanket off entirely and shivering once as the air sweeps over his skin. He gets up, pours himself a couple fingers of whiskey, then starts building a fire over the ashes of the one from the night before.  
For a moment, he gets the sense of being watched. He thinks maybe it’s Bobby, also having trouble with sleep, but when he turns around, no one is there. He reaches under the couch cushion for his gun. The smooth grip of the 1911 is a sensation that could almost make him whole.  
The house remains quiet, and the room remains empty except for him. Eventually, the unsettled feeling passes. It must be his hunter’s sixth sense dialed up a little too high after his dream. He sets the gun aside and strikes a match to start the fire.  
He’s never seen flames flare to life so easily, so elegantly.  
There’s a presence, still, that he can’t explain.

× × ×

Three days later, Dean limps out of his car and up the stairs to his second-story motel room. He always tries not to get rooms on the second floor, because they’re harder to evacuate, but it was the only one left. There was a sports game or something going on nearby and space was at a premium.  
It’s about one in the morning. He only spent one night in Sioux Falls before catching wind of a case in Minneapolis and leaving by noon that day. Bobby tried to get him to stay, but there were no other hunters available to dispatch to the haunting, so Dean left before anyone could get killed. It was five hours ago that he started digging up the grave of a local police officer he suspected of being the spirit in question. Only it hadn’t been her, it had been a poltergeist, and he’d paid for his mistake, as always, by shedding some blood.  
Once inside, he takes his first-aid kit to the bathroom and pulls off his jeans before sitting on the floor of the walk-in shower. Aside from antibiotic ointment, his medicine comes in two forms: a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a bottle of bourbon.  
The cut starts just above his knee and runs down the side of his leg about four inches. It’s deep enough that if he spreads the flayed skin slightly he can see muscle, but the muscle itself appears intact.  
For once, he’s glad to have ended up in an ER last year, because at least his tetanus shot is up-to-date.  
He takes a swig of bourbon and grits his teeth as he uncaps the bottle of hydrogen peroxide. This part is always the worst.  
_“You can cry about it, or you can man up and get it done.”_  
It’s what his father said the first time he had Dean repair his own wounds, shoving the antiseptic, dental floss, and sewing needle his way before going to tend to Sam. Dean was thirteen or fourteen, and he had fucked up a hunt and led the monster back to their inn. Sammy hadn’t really been hurt, but he’d been shaken, and Dean felt terrible. Yes, he’d had tears in his eyes when his dad pulled out the first-aid kit, but it hadn’t been about the pain, or the expectation of it.  
Dean pours the peroxide down his leg, and it still stings worse than he expects it to, momentarily lighting his whole leg with an intense burn. He lets out an involuntary growl and a, “Fuck.”  
Next is the saline spray, then the suturing. He does his best to sterilize a needle with his lighter, then unpackages the suture thread. He keeps his jaw clenched as he works and only pauses to take drinks of liquor. When he ties the last knot and snips the thread, he takes a moment to examine his work.  
“Yep, that’s gonna scar,” he says through an exhale, starting to wrap the wound with roller gauze.  
Slumped back against the pillows on his bed, bottle of bourbon still in hand, he scrolls through his contacts until he finds Sam. If it’s 1:40 here, it’s almost midnight in California. Chances are, Sam is asleep, but maybe that’s all the more reason to call. To say he did.  
The phone rings for a while, and just as Dean is about to hang up to keep it from going to voicemail, Sam answers.  
“Hey. Dean. What’s up?” There’s still sleep in his voice, and Dean briefly ponders feeling guilty for waking him. He decides against it.  
“Hiya, Sammy. How’s life?”  
“Did you—did you actually call me at eleven forty-five just to… catch up?”  
“Dude, if you’re going to bed before midnight, you are doing college all wrong.”  
He scoffs. “Yeah, like you would know. I’m meeting my study group tomorrow morning. You know, studying? The thing people are supposed to do in college?”  
“I knew it was overrated.”  
“Well, I’m good. How are you?”  
“Oh, the usual. Poltergeist today. Last week was a ghoul and a couple demons. I spent a day at Bobby’s place just for the hell of it. We tried—well, I tried to make a pizza—it didn’t go well.”  
Sam laughs. “How do you fuck up a pizza?”  
“Look, his oven has—it doesn’t matter, we ordered delivery.”  
“I bet. How is Bobby doing?”  
“You know, he’s Bobby. Runnin’ off a little more alcohol than sleep, like always, but he’s good.”  
“And Jo and Ellen?”  
“Haven’t seen them as recently, but last I heard, they’re just fine.”  
“Good. Good.”  
Instead of trying to fill the silence, Dean takes a long swig of bourbon. It still astounds him, in a way, that he spent two whole years with his brother as his hunting partner for the first time in his life, and now he can barely hold a conversation with him.  
“Does anything ever happen in California?” Dean asks at last.  
“What do you mean?”  
“I mean—do you ever hear things, things that sound like cases?”  
Sam hesitates. “I mean, sometimes. There’s only been one that sounded convincing, so I called Bobby about it. He found a hunter from Oregon to take care of it. To be honest, I do my best _not_ to hear about cases.”  
“And how does that not drive you nuts?”  
“I don’t know, Dean. I’ve done it before. I learned how, I guess. If you’re trying to get me to consider going back—”  
“I’m not, I’m not.” He draws his uninjured knee up toward his chest, resting his forearm on it and examining the label on the bourbon. “I’m not tryin’ to make you feel guilty about leaving or anything, I just… wonder how you do it.”  
Sam is quiet for a while. Dean tilts the bourbon bottle to see the light reflect off the copper coloring on the label.  
“Are you okay, Dean?”  
“Me? Yeah, of course. Look, I gotta go. It’s late here and I’m hittin’ the road tomorrow morning, so. Have fun huddling around dictionaries or whatever it is you crazy kids do.”  
“Yeah, thanks. Night, Dean.”

_Highway traffic rushes behind him and the smell of gasoline drifts over from the pumps as Dean gives the man a teasing smile and a shrug.  
“I’m just saying, I think I could make your night a lot better than that tequila can.”  
The man smiles and sits on the hood of his blue Lincoln Continental. He’s not drunk yet, but he would’ve gotten there. “You think so, huh?”  
His gaze travels down Dean’s face, down his chest, and lower. Dean feels dissected by it, but he holds his ground. He needs money, tonight, or he and Sam are going to be kicked out of their motel in the morning. And with Dad still out on a hunt, they don’t even have a car to sleep in.  
“Okay, I’ll bite,” the man says. He takes another swig of tequila from the bottle, the silver patches of combed hair at his temples glistening against his otherwise dark head of hair.  
“If that’s what you’re into,” Dean says with a wink. “I take two-fifty for half an hour, four hundred for an hour—you want to get freaky, we’re talkin’ a little extra on top.”  
He climbs out of the man’s car an hour later, a roll of cash in his pocket and a few joints as a tip. He didn’t bother mentioning that he doesn’t usually smoke cannabis, because on nights like this it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.  
He smokes the first one outside the convenience store before going into the 24/7 motel office to pay for another week in their room. It’s growing light out when he emerges, so he makes his way down the road to get breakfast at a fast-food place.  
“Get up, Sammy, I got grub,” he says as he kicks the motel room door closed behind him, setting the key and the bag of food on the table. As he looks around the room, he realizes Sam’s not in bed, or anywhere in the room.  
“Sam? Sammy?”  
He barges into the bathroom, but it’s empty. He tears apart the closet and Sam’s bed, but all Sam’s things are gone. He took off. He’s seventeen years old, and he took off without so much as a note.  
Dean feels the panicked sobs rising in his chest, and he falls back to sit on the edge of the bed.  
Something glows outside the window, a flickering, fiery glow, and Dean jolts to his feet, gripping his gun but not yet drawing it from its holster. The glow fades, but there’s a presence here now, just on the other side of the door. It doesn’t feel like a monster—it feels familiar—but he’s certain it’s not Dad or Sam, which means it must be a threat.  
The lock clicks open. The knob turns, and slowly, the door opens.  
Dean pulls out his pistol and fires._

× × ×

“You gonna be alright?”  
Dean looks over with some surprise at the man in his passenger seat. “Me? Jordan, you called me out here to save _your_ ass, not the other way around.”  
Jordan smirks. “Technically, I called Bobby Singer. Nah, man, I’m just checkin’. Hunter to hunter, you know? Those demons banged us both up pretty good.”  
“Yeah, well. That’s the life, ain’t it? By the way, what do you think they were talking about, a new leader? I didn’t think the demons had a leader after my brother and I killed that yellow-eyed son of a bitch.”  
“I don’t know,” Jordan says, shaking his head. “I try not to listen to what demons say to me. But after that Devil’s Gate opened… who knows, maybe a new big baddie climbed out.”  
“Right. Keep an eye out for me, would you? Call Bobby if you find anything.”  
“Sure thing.”  
Dean pauses, his gaze trailing down to the demons’ blood stains on Jordan’s denim jacket. It’s better to let his gaze rest there than on Jordan’s face, somehow—he’s attractive, a tall Black man with a sharp hairline and dark, lively eyes. He must be about thirty, fairly young for a hunter, not unlike Dean.  
“Thanks,” Dean says at last.  
Jordan nods and opens the car door, then pauses to turn and offer a handshake. “Nice working with you, Dean.”  
He accepts his hand and smiles. “Likewise.”  
“Maybe I’ll see you around. I can pull your ass out of the fire next time.”  
“We’ll see about that.” As the car door shuts, Dean adds through the open window, “Maybe we should grab a drink sometime.”  
Jordan leans down to see inside, one eyebrow cocked a bit above the other.  
“As friends, obviously,” Dean says. “Or—hunters, you know. That way. I don’t—I don’t swing the other way.”  
He smiles. “Maybe. But I gotta be honest—the chances of us being in the same area at the same time again is… pretty slim, man. You know how the job is.”  
“Right. You’re right.”  
“Good luck out there, Dean.”  
“You too.”  
Dean pulls out of the parking lot and makes his way back toward the highway out of town. Before Bobby sent him to rendezvous with Jordan, he was headed to meet up with Jo and Ellen to work a haunted coal mine in Oklahoma. He’s half a day behind now, so even though the sun is setting, he figures he’ll spend the next five or six hours on the road to try to make up for it. He knows why Ellen wanted his help. Jo is insisting on helping, and Ellen is worried enough about whatever is in the mine that she wants backup, for Jo’s sake.  
So, for Jo’s sake, he’ll drive as long as he can before he needs to pass out for a few hours and start again in the morning.

_Dean keeps cleaning the shotguns and packing more salt rounds until he’s confident his father is asleep, passed out on the couch with four beer bottles on the floor beside him. Working on the guns used to leave Dean with cuts and blisters on his hands, but he’s long since formed the right callouses.  
He glances at his father again, then quietly sets the tools aside and stands to see if Sam is in bed yet.  
Dad got them a suite this time, almost like a real house. He paid off a psychic to tell him the outcome of an NFL game and put down a huge bet. It should last them a while, maybe get them a few restaurant dinners instead of drive-throughs.  
As Dean pushes the door to the boys’ bedroom open, he finds Sam kneeling at the foot of the bed, his hands clasped as though in prayer.  
“Sammy? What are you doing?”  
Sam starts a little as he turns around. “I dunno. Praying, I guess.”  
“Praying? To what?”  
Sam gets to his feet, keeping his eyes downcast as he sits on the bed. “God?”  
Dean sighs and sits on his own bed across from him. “Come on. You know God’s not real.”  
“I mean, with monsters and ghosts and stuff being real, don’t you think there might be a God, too? There’s so much bad stuff in the world. There’s gotta be good to balance it out, right?”  
Dean scoffs. “You’re almost ten, Sammy. You know better than that.”  
“What do you believe in, then?”  
“I don’t believe in anything. I think… I think the world is just chaos and random acts of evil, and good only comes from fighting the bad shit.”  
Sam’s expression is sad, and Dean wishes he’d just kept his mouth shut. “I don’t want to think like you,” Sam says, “or Dad. I just wanna believe in… something.”  
“You can believe whatever you want, I guess. I just don’t want you to rely so much on faith that you can’t protect yourself when it really matters, you know?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Go to sleep, Sammy,” he says, standing and tousling his brother’s hair.  
“What about you?”  
“I’m older than you, I don’t have to go to bed yet.”  
Sam rolls his eyes as he climbs under the covers.  
“I just want to make sure Dad gets to bed okay,” Dean says. “I have a funny feeling this is going to be one of those nights he wakes up thinkin’ he’s still in Vietnam.”  
When he turns the bedroom light out and slips back into the main room, something has changed. His dad is gone, and so are the beer bottles that had been littering the room. The lamps are off, but the room somehow glows in a warm, flickering light, as if an invisible fire were lit in its center.  
Dean gets a deep-rooted sense of déjà-vu. This light is familiar. This feeling is familiar. He looks around for a weapon, but all the guns are gone, too.  
A warm gust of air sweeps over him as light flares in the middle of the room, and Dean reflexively shields his eyes. When the light dims, there’s someone at its source, someone who is its source.  
Dean pulls his butterfly knife from his pocket and flips it open in a swift motion, holding it between him and the figure in front of him.  
“Who are you? What are you?”  
As the light fades, the lamps flick on and illuminate him. He’s a man—or looks like one—with dark, windswept hair, dressed in a light tan trench coat over a business suit. His expression is mild but curious, and he tilts his head to one side as he regards Dean.  
“You would not believe me if I told you,” he says.  
Dean shifts his weight, keeping the knife in front of him. “I’ve seen some pretty crazy shit. Try me.”  
The man’s gaze travels down to the blade of the knife, and he looks like he might smile. Then his eyes meet Dean’s again, and he opens his mouth to speak._

A knock on the window drudges him up out of the depths of sleep. Dean opens his eyes, frowning and looking around the car until he realizes the knock came from behind him. He sits up from the bench seat and turns to the window, where he’s met with the harsh blue glare of a flashlight. He rolls the window down a few inches, squinting as his eyes adjust.  
“Problem, officer?” he asks.  
“I was about to ask you the same thing. Usually when I find people sleeping in their cars on the side of the road, there’s a problem.”  
Dean rubs his eyes. “No problem here. I’m on my way down to Oklahoma to see family, but I got too tired to make it to the next rest stop, so. Better that than fall asleep drivin’, huh?”  
“I’m with you, but unfortunately where you’ve parked your car is illegal. It’s not safe on the side of the road like this, for you or for anyone else. I’m gonna have to ask you to move it or get it towed.”  
Dean scowls. As if he would let anyone tow his car. “I’ll move, I’ll move.”  
He checks his watch. He was asleep for about two hours, which should be enough to get him to Ellen and Jo’s motel.  
As he pulls back onto the road and the police lights turn off behind him, his mind is quickly drawn to the dream he’d been having. Strange, how lucid he had been at the end. That was no memory, or even a bastardization of one—it was as though someone had actually been inside his dream. The same someone he had almost seen a few days ago, but decided to shoot at before asking questions.  
Next time—if there is a next time—he’ll get answers.


	2. Beginnings

He never took enough of a break for his shoulder to heal, and his boots are falling apart. It’s been a few days since he showered, because his credit card keeps bouncing and he can’t get a motel room. He hasn’t spoken to another person in forty-eight hours, and before that it was simple “thanks” to a gas station cashier. And he has a demon tied up in his trunk.  
He captured the last one instead of exorcising it immediately, and as much as he hates to keep it in its current vessel, he needs answers about this demon leader he keeps hearing about. He hasn’t heard a name, but she seems to be the talk of demon-town.  
Dean finds a run-down old barn on some abandoned property away from any town, and it’s here that he stops. He gets out and stretches, his shoulder giving him a little twinge of pain as he does so. It’s been weeks since he hacked the head off that ghoul, but ever since the Devil’s Gate opened, he has little hope of getting more than a few days’ rest at a time.  
Twilight’s hint of color at the horizon has darkened, and stars are spattered across the sky. Dean sits on the hood and stares up at them for a moment, folding his arms against the ever-colder night air. There’s space for his thoughts under skies like this, sometimes too much space. But in the same, this car under a wide-open sky—it’s the only solace he’s ever known.  
A few hours later, he steps out of the barn, his hands smelling of salt and iron, his clothes still drying from splashes of holy water. All that, and he didn’t even get the demon leader’s name. The demon from his trunk knew he couldn’t kill it without killing its vessel, and the impermanent pain and threat of exorcism wasn’t enough to motivate it into talking. Tomorrow he’ll exorcise it and drop the vessel off somewhere, but for now he needs sleep, and it’s secure in a devil’s trap and iron chains.  
Maybe tonight, he’ll see it again. Maybe tonight, he’ll get its name.

_His breath catches in his throat when he hears the Impala pull into the parking lot outside.  
“No, no, no, not yet,” he chokes out, searching the room frantically, as if Sam would turn up out of thin air. Horribly, selfishly, his panic shifts from a place of concern about his brother’s safety to one of concern about the consequences he’s about to face.  
The motel key slips into the lock and his father pushes the door open, duffle bag of hunting gear slung over his shoulder. He drops the bag on the floor and flips the deadbolt. He sees Dean’s face as he’s shrugging off his leather jacket, and it makes him pause.  
“Dean? What is it?”  
He wants to try to explain himself, to stall. Instead, he keeps his head down and says, “Sam’s gone.”  
“Gone? What do you mean, gone?”  
“I can’t find him. I searched the whole motel, the whole block, I called for him, I just can’t—I don’t know if he left, or if something—”  
There’s panic in his father’s eyes, and there’s fury, too. Dean starts to step back, but his dad is faster, grabbing the collar of Dean’s shirt to keep him in place. “How long? How long’s he been gone? And you didn’t call me?”  
“I don’t know, I got back about forty minutes a—”  
“Got back from what? What came before your brother’s safety?”  
“I was—” Don’t cry. Don’t cry, you’ll just make it worse. “There’s a used record store down the street, I just wanted to—”  
“Your brother could be dead right now, Dean. I trusted you, I trusted you to keep him safe.”  
“Please, just help me find him, Dad. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I just want to know he’s okay—”  
The world goes pitch black, less like a power outage and more like temporary blindness. Dean stumbles back a step as his shirt collar is released. Then the motel room reappears, empty. An impossible but unmistakable sound—huge wings beating—accompanies the rush of warm air from behind him.  
“Hello, Dean.”  
He scrambles for his pistol as he whips around. He levels the gun with the mystery man’s head and cocks it with his thumb, glaring down the barrel.  
“What do you want from me?”  
The man gazes calmly at him, unperturbed by the gun. “Your weapons won’t do anything to me. Not least because we are still inside your dream.”  
Dean takes a breath, keeping the gun up and his gaze hard. “Who—or what—are you?”  
“My name is Castiel. I’m an angel of the Lord.”  
“Bullshit.”  
“I told you you wouldn’t believe me.”  
“Why the hell are you in my dreams? And why—why this one? I’ve been dreaming weird, normal shit for the past week, but you choose this moment to pop in?”  
“It’s easier for me to be here when your dreams are more vivid, closer to memory.”  
“You want to eavesdrop inside my head.”  
Castiel narrows his eyes. “I haven’t been hiding from you, Dean. I have tried to come here to speak to you—what, three times now?”  
Dean swallows. “Fine.” He lowers the gun, but keeps it ready. “What have you been trying to tell me, then?”  
“I’m here to deliver a warning. About the demon you’ve been tracking. Her name is Lilith, and she is unlike any demon you’ve faced before.”  
“How?”  
“Lilith was the first soul to become a demon. One of the first humans, alongside Adam. Her being loose upon the world… It’s an omen of worse things to come.”  
Dean shifts his weight. “What kind of worse things?”  
“Events that were foretold many hundreds of years ago. Events outside of your control.”  
“You’re talking biblical kinds of events.”  
Castiel gives a small nod.  
Hesitantly, Dean holsters his pistol. “So, say you are an angel—which I still don’t believe, by the way. What’s your angle? Why are you talking to me, of all people?”  
“Because I have orders.”  
“Orders from who? God?”  
Castiel looks at him evenly, and he doesn’t need to respond to get his point across.  
Dean scoffs and turns away. “This is crazy—hell, maybe this is just a dream. I’ve seen what’s out there, and it ain’t good. Angels? God? None of that is real. Even if it was, why would God give a shit about me?”  
Castiel tilts his head. “Is it faith in God you lack, or faith in yourself?”  
Dean tosses him a scowl. “You don’t know me, pal. Cut the crap, what’s the deal with Lilith?”  
“If you continue to pursue her, you will only make things worse. It’s in your best interest and the best interest of heaven that you keep from confronting her.”  
“If she’s so bad, can’t you and your—heavenly host or whatever just ice her and get it over with?”  
“I follow orders, Dean. And killing Lilith is not my assignment.” Castiel takes a step closer. “I know you are a hunter of monsters, and you believe it’s your duty to end every evil thing you come across, but Lilith is different.”  
Dean eyes him. “And how do I know you’re not just some demon messing with my head to try to get me to leave her alone?”  
“Do you really believe I’m a demon?” Castiel challenges, moving closer again. “You know the presence of evil, better than most humans. Is that what you feel now?”  
His reflex is one of scorn, but he has to admit to himself that the warmth he’s felt in Castiel’s presence is like nothing he’s encountered before. There’s a word for it, maybe, that he refuses to use. It could explain why he keeps having dreams about angels and faith—maybe his subconscious sensed something he refused to acknowledge.  
Just like that, the flap of wings sounds again, and with a flicker of light, Castiel is gone. In his absence, Dean can’t help but name the feeling.  
Angelic._

× × ×

“You know, for as long as you’ve had that car, I figured you would know how to fix it.”  
Dean slides out from under the Impala to see Jo smirking down at him, a beer in each hand and a folder tucked under one arm.  
He scowls as he sits up. “I—”  
“I’m kidding, don’t look at me like that,” she says, rolling her eyes. She offers him one of the bottles. “But you have been out here forever.”  
He tosses his wrench aside and wipes his hands on a rag before taking the beer. “I’ve been neglecting her a bit lately. I have some catching up to do.” He pops the cap off the bottle and gets to his feet, closing the hood of the car to have a seat on the edge of it. He nods to the folder under Jo’s arm. “What have you got there?”  
“A case.” She takes it in her other hand and holds it out to him. “I think I’ve got everything I need for it, but I wanted to run it by the expert” —she says it with a hint of sarcasm— “before I head out.”  
Dean takes the folder, but his gaze doesn’t leave Jo’s face. “Your mom wants you to run your cases by me, doesn’t she?”  
Jo sighs and sits beside him on the hood, staring out at the highway as she takes a swig of beer. “Pretty much. But it’s the most freedom she’s given me yet, so.”  
Dean nods and opens the file. He sees a few words, something about liquefied brains, then closes it again and looks over at her. “You still sure this is what you want to do?”  
“Hunting? We’ve already talked about this, Dean. Yeah, it is.”  
“I get wanting to do it for your dad—believe me, I do. But you’ve got…” He nods to the new bar, which isn't officially called the Roadhouse but it's what they all call it anyway. “You’ve got a life here. That doesn’t stick around when you start hunting.”  
Jo scoffs. “Bartending for my mom, getting hit on by drunk assholes every week? Yeah, I sure want to preserve _that._ ”  
Dean tosses her an annoyed look. “I’m just sayin’. By the time you realize what you left behind, it might be too late to get it back. Nobody gets out of this job once they really start it, you know that.”  
“Sam got out.”  
“Yeah, well. No one does what Sammy did. Exception that proves the rule or whatever.”  
She folds her arms. “This seems weird, coming from the guy who’s never considered leaving hunting in his life.”  
“Yeah, but I don’t know any different. I got no idea how to get a job, or open a bank account, or sign a lease, or—hell, I haven’t even renewed my real driver’s license since I turned twenty-one. I was six years old the first time I looked down the barrel of a gun. I’ve never been able to see the world any other way.”  
Jo is quiet for a moment as she takes a couple swigs of beer. “So, you didn’t choose hunting. But my dad did. I want to. This life, at the Roadhouse… it’s like I’m half in and half out. I guess I just want to belong somewhere.”  
Dean tries to smile, but his brow furrows as he looks down at his beer.  
“So,” Jo says, giving him a nudge with her elbow, “the case?”

× × ×

Dean tosses his suit jacket onto the bed and loosens his tie enough to unbutton the top button of his shirt. With a sigh, he cracks open a lukewarm beer and drops into the office chair in the corner of the motel room. He has a mess of books and papers spread across the desk, varying in topic: some regarding lore about reapers, which he’s no longer convinced is what he’s hunting, some on demonology, and the rest about angels.  
He picked up this case thinking it was a rogue reaper, but these people aren’t dying out of turn the way they were in Nebraska. They’re dying violently, but always by human causes—murders, car crashes, workplace accidents. And yet, there are multiple reports of a humanoid figure appearing after the violent deaths, leaning over the dead bodies before disappearing into thin air. But no reaper would let itself be seen by the living, would it? And the claim some witnesses made that the cloaked figure was feeding on the bodies… it doesn’t fit.  
Dean rubs a hand over his face and rifles through the pile of books to see if there’s one he hasn’t checked by now. This part, the research—this was what Sam was always so good at. Give Dean something to kill and he’ll have it dead by the end of the day, but the research? His brother was the specialist there, and progress is slower now than it ever was during the two years they spent hunting the yellow-eyed demon.  
He debates calling Bobby, but it’s past midnight in Sioux Falls and he figures he might as well let the man sleep. This creature, whatever it actually is, doesn’t seem to be killing people, so there’s no real rush.  
Dean sits back and props his feet up on the desk, choosing the one lore book that was already here when he checked in: The Holy Bible. The pages are feathery and rumpled, the text tiny on the gray pages. It’s enough to give him a headache, if he keeps at it long enough, but he still wants answers. He wants some proof that his dream of Castiel had been real—or maybe he would rather proof that it wasn’t. But he won’t find that in any book. The best he can do is try to find out if what the so-called angel told him about Lilith was true, and see if an angel visiting him in a dream makes an iota of sense in the first place. If Lilith’s plan really is so big he can’t do anything to stop her, why would heaven—God—bother sending an angel to tell him that? Dean has always been certain about one thing: even if there was a God, He wouldn’t know or care that Dean exists. 

He lifts his head from the desk some time later, realizing belatedly that he had fallen asleep but unsure what woke him. He glances around and starts when he sees Castiel watching him from across the room.  
“What the fuck, man?” Dean says, glowering. He reaches back to find the grip of his pistol, but doesn’t draw it.  
“You’re still dreaming,” Castiel says without moving.  
_“What?”  
“You’re still asleep. I brought you into this dream to speak with you.”  
Dean rubs his forehead with his free hand. “You can do that?”  
“Only if I have to. I know you’re still tracking Lilith, Dean.”  
He sighs and lets go of the gun, standing from the desk chair and realizing he’s back in jeans and t-shirt rather than the suit he’d been wearing when he fell asleep. “Yeah. I’m tracking her. I’m not planning to bust in and kill her. Yet, anyway.”  
“What part of ‘you will only make things worse’ escapes your understanding?”  
“She’s building an army, Cas. A—”  
“Castiel.”  
“A demon army? Maybe that ain’t a problem from where you’re standing, but here? On earth? That’s a pretty big fucking problem. She could kill a lot of people, and I can’t just ignore that. _Cas.”  
_The angel narrows his eyes. “A message from God isn’t enough for you?”  
“From God?” Dean scoffs. “All I see is dude in a trench coat.”  
Castiel’s eyes flare a brilliant flame blue. With a searing heat that ripples the air, six fiery wings unfurl from his back, each translucent feather flickering like an ember—the wingspan of the middle pair, the largest of the three, is more than can fit in the small motel room.  
“If you were to behold my true form on earth, it would burn your eyes from your skull,” Castiel says. “Even in this dream it could drive you insane.” The wings fold in and disappear and his eyes darken back to their normal color, an impossibly deep blue. “So you would do well to believe me.”  
Dean swallows. The afterimage of the wings is still burned onto his retinas, and he gets the sudden sense that he’s in way, way over his head.  
“This look is just how you blend in, then?” he says stiffly.  
“I’m using the appearance of the last vessel I took on earth.”  
“You have to possess people? Like a demon?”  
“Not like a demon. When angels use a vessel, it is with permission only. It’s…more collaborative than possession.”  
“Sure.” Dean steps away from the desk and eyes Castiel as he considers. “If I’m gonna believe you about Lilith, you’ll have to give me more than ‘you’ll make things worse.’ What’s her endgame? What happens if I do nothing, and what happens if I try to stop her?”  
“She will kill you if you face her alone.”  
Dean shrugs, shakes his head. “I face that kind of shit all the time. And if I die, so what? No one cares. You’ll have to do better than that.”  
“Maybe God cares,” Castiel says, as if challenging him.  
“Shouldn’t you know if God cares? You’re his messenger and all.”  
“My orders come from the archangels. Do you think I ask them why God makes the demands He does?”  
“Maybe you should start.”  
“You need accept that you have a role to play and stop questioning everything you’re told.”  
Dean spreads his hands. “And what, and my role is to do nothing?”  
“If your father told you not to interfere with Lilith’s plan, would you listen then?”  
“My father hunted monsters,” he snaps. “He would want Lilith dead. Don’t try to—” He stops himself and, watching Castiel closely, begins to advance on him. “You want Lilith’s plan to succeed, don’t you? You want there to be a war against the demons.”  
“I want Lilith stopped,” Castiel says, holding his gaze without flinching. “Just not by you.”  
“What are you then, my guardian angel?” His tone drips with sarcasm, but Castiel simply looks at him.  
“If it’s helpful for you to think of it that way.”  
Dean squints at him for a moment, wondering just briefly if angels have the capacity for humor. Then he shakes his head and turns away. Somehow, even though he’s dreaming, he’s still tired. His gaze lands on the books on the desk.  
“Hold on. Reapers are sort of like angels, right? Angels of death?”  
“Reapers are a class of angel, yes.” Castiel’s brow creases slightly. “Why?”  
“Something weird is happening with the violent deaths in this town. People keep saying they see a cloaked figure leaning over the bodies. If it is a reaper, ain’t that kind of in your wheelhouse? Can’t you tell it to fuck off, angel to angel?”  
Castiel’s frown deepens. “A reaper wouldn’t show itself to anyone but the dead or dying.”  
“What else could it be, then? It’s not killing people, just showing up after they’re dead. But they appear and disappear like reapers or ghosts, not like monsters. A couple witnesses described an old woman with claws and sharp teeth, who seemed to be feeding on the bodies.”  
“They’re not reapers,” Cas says, realization sparking in his expression.  
“They? There’s more than one?”  
“It’s a flock of keres. Death spirits, drawn to violent death to feed on blood and remnants of human soul. As unlike an angel as you can get.” He shakes his head, seemingly troubled. “To find them outside of Europe is strange enough, but in December, too…”  
“December? Why does it matter that it’s December?”  
Castiel tilts his head, eyes losing focus as if he’s listening to something Dean can’t hear. “I have to go,” he says, looking at Dean again. “Get rid of the keres. Anthesteria will tell you how.”  
“How—what?”  
In a couple of wingbeats, the angel disappears._

Dean opens his eyes. Still in the motel room, still in his suit. He straightens, a page of the Bible trying to stick to his cheek. He grabs the motel stationery and pen and does his best to spell “keres” and “Anthesteria” before he forgets the words. He checks his watch. It’s not yet five o’clock, and he’s guessing the local library closes at six at the earliest.  
He drains the rest of his beer and doesn’t bother changing out of the fed threads before taking the piece of stationery and going to his car.  
Less than an hour later, he’s sitting at a library computer reading a webpage about Greek mythology, which includes death-spirits called keres and a three-day celebration called Anthesteria, which took place in late January or early February included banishing the keres on the third day. As best he can tell, he can’t kill them, but he can cast them away with a simple ritual involving a fruit offering and a phrase in Greek.  
It’s the first time he considers that the angel might actually be here to help him.

× × ×

Dean’s phone rings as he’s driving west out of Amarillo, Texas, headed toward a collection of demon signs in New Mexico. He almost doesn’t hear the ringtone over the Def Leppard song he’s playing loudly in the car. When he checks the caller ID, he’s surprised to see it’s his brother.  
“Yo. What’s up, Sammy?”  
“Dean. I need your help.” Sam’s voice is strained.  
Dean shuts the music off. “What happened? What do you need?”  
“I'm in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. Just outside it. I’m okay—I mean, I’m not dying at the moment.” He lets out a quiet hiss of pain through his teeth.  
“If you need to go to the hospital, man, just do it. I’ll figure out how to pay the bill, just—”  
“No, no, it’s not that. I have insurance through the school. It’s just that I’m—I’m kind of cornered. The demons don’t know where I am yet, but… I’m not going anywhere soon.”  
“Son of a bitch,” Dean says as he slams the accelerator, Baby’s growl climbing higher in pitch. “I’m about two and half hours out—hell, I can make it two. Why are you in New Mexico, Sam? How did demons find you?”  
“I, uh. I’ve been hunting. Sort of.”  
“And you didn’t bother to tell me?”  
“Look, Dean, I’ll explain everything when you get here, I promise. I can’t talk any longer, I’m not sure if they can hear me. It’s an old warehouse at one fifty-six Alto Road.”  
“Wait, wait. Did you meet anyone interesting last Tuesday?”  
“Did I—oh. This isn’t a trap, Dean, and I’m me.”  
“Just answer the question.”  
“Henry McCarty, as a matter of fact.”  
“Okay. Be careful, Sammy. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”  
Two grueling hours later, in the lot outside the warehouse, he stops the car so fast the tires slide in the gravel. He tosses the demon-fighting kit he’s assembled over the last year into his duffle bag and slings it over his shoulder. He doesn’t take the time to change out the silver bullets in his 1911 for devil’s trap ones, instead ejecting the whole magazine and slamming in a new one.  
The moment he enters the building, he hears a heavy banging, like someone beating on a door. He follows the sound with his gun drawn, making his way through the dark as his eyes adjust. The warehouse smells like musty concrete and rust, but as he gets closer to the noise, the air reeks of sulfur. As he crosses the wide-open space taking up most of the building, he can see some sort of control room with a large glass window, and three demons are inside. Sam must be behind the door on the far side of the control room, because all three of them are intent on getting through it.  
Dean ducks under the window to cross to the open doorway and sets his duffle bag carefully on the floor. Back against the wall just adjacent to the entry, he raises his pistol, racking the slide in time with the clang of the door to keep them from hearing him. They’ll see him the moment he steps into the doorway, so he’ll have to act fast.  
He pivots and gets two shots off, one in a demon’s leg and one in another’s stomach, before the third throws him back onto the floor. His head hits the concrete and dark spots speckle his vision, his ears still ringing from the echo of the gunshots. As his eyesight clears, he catches movement toward him and raises the gun, only to have it torn from his grasp.  
“Damn hunters,” the demon says, grabbing the front of Dean’s jacket and hauling him to his feet. Her eyes flick to black. “There are so many more of you than last time I was topside. But you’re still outnumbered.”  
She swings for his head. She’s too strong for him to block, so he deflects over his shoulder, throwing her off balance, and dives for his bag. He grabs a fire extinguisher out of it and pulls the pin, turning and squeezing the lever just in time to spray holy water into the demon’s face. She screams, flesh sizzling, and stumbles backward, giving Dean a chance to retrieve his pistol. As soon as she’s recovered from the holy water, he puts a bullet in her leg.  
He stands where he can see all three demons—they curse and struggle, but can’t move—and starts to recite, _“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis…_ fuck.” He pulls a piece of paper from his demon kit and reads the rest of the exorcism from it. At _audi nos,_ black demon smoke erupts from the three vessels and disappears into the ground. The humans collapse, momentarily unconscious.  
Dean rushes across the room and knocks on the badly-dented door. “Sam? Demons are gone, you okay?”  
He counts five of his own frantic heartbeats before there’s a rustle from inside and the lock clicks. Dean pushes the door open slowly to keep from hitting his brother on the other side, and salt scatters across the floor as he breaks the line at the bottom of the door.  
Sam sits on the floor against the wall, a bruise on his forehead and blood dried under one nostril, relief washing over his expression as he sees Dean.  
“Took you long enough,” he says with a huffed laugh.  
“What the fuck happened, man?” Dean says, stepping inside and kneeling to take stock of his brother’s injuries. The way he’s holding his arm, he either broke it or dislocated his shoulder, and his lower left pantleg is bloodied, but he seems alright otherwise.  
“I think I’m rusty,” Sam says. “I haven’t had to fight demons in months.”  
“Why are you fighting demons in the first place? Why didn’t you tell me you were hunting again?”  
“It wasn’t meant to be—I was just gonna take care of a couple things, I didn’t intend to come back to hunting full-time or anything. I didn’t want you to worry about what I was doing.”  
Dean glowers at him. “I always worry about you, kid.”  
“I know, and I figured maybe if you thought I was still at Stanford, it would give you some peace of mind.”  
“How long—”  
The groan of one of the people outside the room interrupts him.  
“We’ll talk about this later, come on. Can you walk?”  
“Yeah, I think so, if you can give me a hand up.”  
Dean pulls Sam to his feet with his uninjured arm. “You good?”  
Sam nods.  
“My car’s outside, it’s unlocked. Meet me out there, I gotta take care of these people.”  
Sam limps away as Dean pulls out his phone and calls 911. He reports gunshots in the general vicinity, then hangs up and pulls bandages from his duffle bag. The person he accidentally hit in the abdomen is a young man about Dean’s age, and he looks to be in bad shape. His wound still oozes thick, dark blood, but his eyes are half open, unfocused. Beside him, a man in his forties with the gunshot in his thigh looks pale and confused, but he’s sitting up.  
“Did I… did I try to hurt that kid?” the man asks, gazing over at where the demons had trapped Sam.  
Dean tosses a tourniquet in his lap. “No. You didn’t. Put that on your leg, and get it tight.” He kneels beside the younger man and checks his pulse. It’s present, but fast and weak. “Shit,” he says under his breath, pressing a bandage to the wound. He doesn’t have the time or resources to help him—he can only hope the ambulance gets here in time.  
The man sitting up doesn’t look like he knows how to put the tourniquet on, so Dean does it for him, twisting the handle until the flow of blood out of the wound slows, then strapping it in place.  
“Who are you? What happened?” the man asks.  
“You’re gonna have a lot of questions for a long time, pal,” Dean says. “I suggest you try to forget about the whole thing.”  
He leaves the dazed man behind to place another tourniquet on the woman as she begins to stir. Then he tosses his pistol and the holy water fire extinguisher back into his bag and jogs outside.  
He can hear the ambulance and police sirens as he sits down in his car beside Sam, who’s already in the passenger seat.  
“You got a place you’re staying in town?” Dean asks, tossing the duffle bag in the backseat and starting the engine.  
“I—yeah. The Night Inn, it’s on the main road, just in town.”  
“Okay. I’ll patch you up there, we’ve got to bail before the cops get here.”  
“Are those people going to survive?”  
Dean tightens his jaw. “Two of ‘em. The third… I don’t know.” He glances over at his brother as he pulls onto the road. “You’d better start talkin’.”  
When he stops the car in the inn’s parking lot, he tries to find words, but he keeps coming up short. Despite everything Sam had said after their dad died—about hunting, about doing the job like they always had—Dean had believed him when he said he wanted to go back to Stanford and see it through. He’s imagined Sam returning to hunting, plenty of times. But never very seriously, and never like this.  
Eventually, Dean scoffs and shakes his head.  
“What were you thinking, man? You’ve always been with me or Dad when you hunt, you’ve pretty much never done it alone. Now you’re throwing yourself at demons two states away from your school?”  
“I’m telling you, this wasn’t supposed to be a long-term thing. It started with the one banshee case, and I went back to school that Monday.” He’s gesturing emphatically with his uninjured arm, as he does when he’s getting worked up. “I’ve just… I’ve been hearing things, more and more things, and I wanted to figure out what was going on.”  
“So, call me! Don’t—” Dean stops himself, pushing down the anger rising into his throat. “How long’s it been? Last time we talked, in September, were you hunting then?”  
“No. I wasn’t.” His tone is steady, and his eyes don’t widen with feigned innocence. Dean’s inclined to believe him.  
Dean sighs and gets out of the car. He grabs his first-aid kit and helps Sam into the inn, avoiding the startled gaze of the receptionist as they go by the desk.  
“You couldn’t have picked somewhere with rooms that opened to the parking lot?” Dean grumbles as they make their way down the hall.  
“Shut up.”  
Once inside, Sam sits in the armchair with a wince and Dean drops the first aid kit on the floor beside him.  
“And you don’t want to go to the hospital, Mr. Health Insurance?”  
“Nah. I’ll be fine. Haven’t needed it yet.”  
Dean shrugs and starts to prod at Sam’s shoulder. “Can you move it at all?”  
“Not really.”  
“You still got feeling in your hand?”  
“It’s kind of numb.”  
He follows the top of Sam’s shoulder blade out to his arm and feels for the humerus. “Yep, you dislocated it. Sit up straight and press your back into the back of the chair.”  
“This ain’t my first rodeo, Dean.”  
He braces his brother’s scapula with one hand and takes his elbow with the other. “Deep breath, on three, okay?”  
Sam nods and inhales deeply.  
“One. Two—”  
He tugs Sam’s arm down and forward. Sam cries out in pain and indignation, but Dean got his confirmation—he could feel the bone clunk back into its socket.  
“God, why do I still trust you when you say you’ll count to three?”  
Dean smirks. “I have no idea.” He grabs a triangle bandage from the first aid kit and ties it into a sling around Sam’s neck. “Better?”  
“Yeah,” he says, somewhat grudgingly. As Dean pulls out the bottle of whiskey from the first aid kit and takes a swig himself, Sam adds, “Hey, let me ask you something. I didn’t see what happened back there, but… you took out three demons on your own. Like they were just regular monsters. I know I’m a little rusty, but even a year ago we couldn’t have done that without getting our asses handed to us. How’d you do it?”  
Dean shrugs as he offers the whiskey bottle to Sam. “The job’s changed since we opened the Devil’s Gate. We deal with a lot more demons than we used to. A few months ago, Bobby and Ellen and I sat down and put together survival kits for hunting demons, started distributing them to other hunters. It works, most of the time, and I’ve had a lot of practice using it.”  
Sam shakes his head and takes a sip of whiskey. “You shot them. What kind of bullets work on demons?”  
“Carve a pentagram into one and it’ll trap a demon in place while you exorcise it. Can’t move, can’t smoke out. Of course, it hurts their vessels, too, so we try not to use it unless we have to. But hell, sometimes it feels like we’re fightin’ a war, and we get desperate.”  
“Right.”  
Sam raises the bottle toward his lips, then changes his mind and sets it down on the table. His expression looks something like guilt. He seems like he’s about to speak, but he doesn’t. Dean debates telling him about Lilith, about how whatever kind of war they’re fighting will be a hundred times worse soon, but he doesn’t.  
“I think I just want to shower and go to sleep,” Sam says at last. “For, like, a year.”  
“Yeah, me too,” Dean says distantly. “I’ll take the floor.”


	3. Inevitable

_Dean sits on the porch with Zeppelin playing on his Walkman as he watches Sam throw a tennis ball for the dog. He’s just mown the lawn, so the air smells like fresh grass, and he knows his mom is home because her blue Mustang is in the driveway beside the Impala.  
Sam is lying in the grass now, giggling as the dog tries to lick his face. Dean smiles.  
“Hello, Dean,” a voice says behind him.  
Dean starts and twists around, pulling the headphones down to hang around his neck. “Come on, man,” he complains, rolling his eyes. “Now you’ve gotta interrupt the good ones, too?”  
Castiel looks around. “This dream is vivid, but I sense this never really happened.”  
“Of course it never happened. But I have this dream all the time.” Dean turns back to look at the yard, the street. “It’s always summer, I’m always back home in Lawrence. Sometimes my mom is out here with me, sometimes she’s inside, but she’s always nearby. Sam is always nine or ten, and there’s always a dog, for some reason.” He shakes his head and presses pause on the Walkman. “Why are you here, Cas?”  
Castiel sits on the porch step beside him, watching Sam and the dog. “You don’t want him to go back to California, yet you worry about him hunting again.”  
Dean frowns and looks at his shoes. “Yeah. I mean, it’s not that I don’t want him to go to school—hell, I’m probably jealous, but hunting with Sam feels… natural, like it’s what I’m supposed to be doing. I know what he’s up to if we’re together, we can talk, we have each other’s backs.” He runs his thumb over the window of the Walkman. “But I don’t know what happens to him in the long run if he keeps hunting. He says the psychic stuff hasn’t happened since Yellow-Eyes died, but… I just don’t believe it’s really over.”  
“And if it comes back?”  
Dean looks up, searches Cas’s expression. “My dad told me—the last thing he ever told me was that if I couldn’t save my brother, I would have to kill him. And I can’t. I know I can’t. So, if Sam hunting again means he goes dark side… I’d rather he stay in California forever if it meant he’d be safe.”  
“You would go to great lengths to protect him.” It sounds almost like a question.  
“I’d die for that kid. In a heartbeat.”  
Castiel is hard to read, but he seems troubled. “Is that what you want, Dean? Is that how you want to live and die, as your brother’s keeper?”  
Dean blinks. “I don’t know, man, I… What’s it to you?”  
Cas turns his head away to watch the flowers beside the porch step. “Sam has a role to play in Lilith’s plan.”  
“What?”  
The angel doesn’t answer, his gaze following a bee as it buzzes into the center of a flower. Dean snaps his fingers in front of Castiel’s face.  
“Hey. What do you mean, he has a role? What is it?”  
Castiel turns back to look at him, just slowly enough there might be some spite in the movement. “I’m not at liberty to say.”  
“The fuck does that mean?”  
Cas’s voice hardens. “It means, there are certain things I—can’t—tell you.”  
“Can’t or won’t?”  
“Both.”  
Dean unloops the headphones from around his neck and tosses them and Walkman onto the porch behind him. With a sigh, he runs his hands over his face, and when he opens his eyes again, Sam and the dog are gone, and the sky is covered by clouds.  
“Those death-spirits you told me about? The keres? I did some digging, and I found something that said them showing up early might be an omen. They’re attracted to violent death, so when they appear out of turn, especially in numbers, it can mean some kind of war is coming, or some event with a catastrophic death toll. Like, for example, the actual, biblical apocalypse.”  
Castiel just watches him.  
“But you already knew that, didn’t you? That’s why you looked spooked when I first mentioned them.”  
“I was aware they may be an omen.”  
“That’s not good enough. For once, Castiel, give me a straight fucking answer: is Lilith trying to kick off Armageddon?”  
“Yes.”  
He answers so simply that it takes a moment for the implication to really sink in.  
“Son of a bitch,” Dean says, and thunder cracks across the sky.  
“There are certain seals that must be broken for Lilith to unleash Hell on earth, and the first was broken four months ago.”  
“Four months ago? What happened four months ago?”  
“A human soul shed blood in Hell. The soul of a man who believed himself to be righteous, a man who never realized what kind of atrocities he was capable of. He had been in Hell for exactly two years.”  
Dean frowns. “Exactly two…” His eyes widen as he meets Castiel’s gaze, and for a moment he can’t speak, can barely breathe.  
“That soul was your father’s, Dean.”  
“No, no, no,” Dean says, standing, stepping off the porch and facing Cas. “Wait. I saw him at the Devil’s Gate. He escaped Hell.”  
The angel stands as well and shakes his head. “Human souls can’t exist on Earth for long—either they become trapped in the veil as ghosts, or they go to whichever afterlife they were destined for. Demon deal or not, your father’s soul was going to—”  
Castiel catches Dean’s punch so fast he hadn’t seen him move.  
“Do you really believe,” Castiel says, still trapping Dean’s fist in his hand, “that your father would go to Heaven? I’ve seen your dreams, Dean. I’ve seen what he did—”  
“Shut up,” Dean snarls, pulling his hand away. “Just shut the fuck up for a minute.”  
He turns from Castiel, lowering his head and trying to stop himself from shaking. For this being his dream, he has remarkably little conscious control over it.  
“Dean.”  
“Okay,” he says, facing Cas and folding his arms. “So, the first seal is broken. How many until Lilith kick-starts the apocalypse, seven?”  
“For Lilith’s specific plan, sixty-six. She’s broken fifteen so far. When the last one breaks—”  
“Hell on Earth. I get the picture.”  
“Not just Hell. Lucifer. She wants to release Lucifer, and he will lead the demon army against Earth and Heaven.”  
“Lucifer? As in, Satan? Horns, pitchfork, king-of-evil Satan?”  
“Humans have a number of misconceptions about Lucifer’s true nature, but… yes.”  
“A few weeks ago, I didn’t even think angels existed, and now this… This is way above my pay grade.” Dean scoffs and rubs a hand over his mouth. “You said I shouldn’t go after Lilith. But if she’s trying to unleash Lucifer, if she’s trying to start the goddamn apocalypse… I have to stop her. Someone does. You understand that, right?”  
Cas hesitates. “Some things are meant to happen, Dean. This has been foretold for centuries. 'And a great punishment shall befall the deeds of this generation from the Lord. Much blood shall be shed upon the earth, and there shall be none to gather and none to bury. And in those days the children shall begin to study the laws, and to seek the commandments, and to return to the path of righteousness.'”  
“Don’t give me any of that holy crap.” “'At that time the Lord will heal His servants, and they shall rise up and see great peace.' This is the process through which this world becomes a better place.” Dean shakes his head. “This ain’t ‘meant to be,’ Cas, not if it means millions of people die. That's not mercy, or salvation, or whatever. It's a fucking massacre.”  
Cas’s gaze holds something in the middle distance. Dean can’t tell if he’s taking in a word he’s saying.  
“You said I couldn’t go after Lilith because God wanted me alive, right? So—”  
“I didn’t—”  
“I’ll get help, then. Bobby, Ellen, Jo, probably Sam, since he’s gotten himself back in anyway. Whatever it takes.”  
Castiel’s eyes meet Dean’s, and for a moment Dean thinks he’ll challenge him, tell him he can’t. Instead, an orange glow flickers across the porch, and in a few wingbeats, the angel is gone._

× × ×

“So? What’s it gonna be, you in or out?”  
Dean glances over at his brother from the driver’s seat. Repeatedly clicking the pen he accidentally stole from the inn, Sam turns over his options as if he’s mentally solving a Rubik’s cube. Dean can’t imagine how this is decision requires so much consideration, but he can’t imagine going to law school, either. Maybe there are things about his little brother he will never understand.  
“I’m in,” Sam says quietly. “I mean, it’s the apocalypse. I can’t just turn the other cheek, can I?”  
“You wanted to know what was going on with all the demons. That’s what’s going on. Look, man, I’m still giving you a choice here. I know you were set to finally graduate in a couple months. And it’s not like I could blame you for wanting to keep this kind of weight off your shoulders.”  
“You’re taking it on.”  
“Yeah, well. That’s me.”  
“Better two to carry it than one.”  
Between glances at the road, Dean watches his brother. It’s been less than two years since they killed the Yellow-Eyed Demon, but it feels like it’s been a lifetime since he had Sam in the passenger seat.  
Sam looks up. “What?”  
“Nothing.” The light turns green.  
“Why were you looking at me like that?”  
“Forget it. If we’re gonna stop the apocalypse, you’d better get back in shape,” Dean says, nodding at Sam’s arm still in a sling. “I can’t have you busting something every time we fight a couple of demons.”  
“Oh, bite me.” Sam’s smile fades, and he sighs. “Going back to Stanford was harder than I expected it to be. Harder than I’ve been letting on. It was easy leaving the first time, you know? It was all I’d ever wanted, I thought.”  
It’s an old, familiar pain, hearing him talk about abandoning the family for school.  
“But now…” Sam shakes his head. “Those two years—looking for Dad, hunting the demon—I mean, they sucked, but I realized there were things I liked about the job, too. Things I missed. It’s been harder to ignore possible cases, it’s harder to talk to people who don’t understand the life. I had to come up with all these lies about what I’d been doing just to be re-admitted to the program. And… being back there, I missed Jess. More than I thought I would.”  
“Yeah,” Dean says, watching another mile marker go by. “Well, I’m not gonna get all gushy on you, but I will say—hunting hasn’t been the same without you, Sammy. Apocalypse or not, I’d rather have you by my side than any other hunter.”  
“Thanks, Dean.”  
“So, you think this is it? You think this the point of no return for you? Or do you think you’d still try to go back to a normal life? Assuming the world doesn’t end and all that.”  
“No.” Sam is staring at the pen as he turns it over in his hands. “I think the point of no return was when I saw Jessica burn on the ceiling. It just took me until now to realize it.”

× × ×

_As many times as Dean tries to tell himself he’s not nervous, his guts wind into knots as he sits with the engine idling, rain pattering on the roof of the car. What he’s about to do is a complete shot in the dark, and he hates not being able to see his target. Yet somehow, he’s willing to take this chance, which may never happen again.  
Cassie emerges from her apartment, shielding her eyes against the rain. Dean steps out of the Impala to open the passenger door for her, but she pauses when she reaches him, looking up at him as a few raindrops catch in her eyelashes.  
“Hey,” he says lamely.  
“Hey, yourself.”  
She rises up to kiss him, briefly, then ducks into the car. He shuts the door and takes a deep breath as he returns to the driver’s seat.  
“You seem nervous,” she says. In his periphery he can see her slight frown, and he knows she’s trying to catch his eye. “Everything okay?”  
“Yeah, I’m good.” He pulls onto the road and flicks the windshield wipers on. “How about we drive around a bit? I have something I want to talk to you about.”  
“Sure. Okay. Now you’re making me a little nervous.”  
“Nah, we’re good. We’re good.” Stopped at a traffic light, he taps his thumb against the steering wheel, everything he planned to say suddenly fleeing his mind.  
“Dean? Light’s green.”  
“Oh. Right.”  
He makes it about a block before she speaks again.  
“Okay, pull over.” When they’re stopped, she unbuckles her lap belt and slides across the bench seat, reaching up to run her fingers through his hair, stroking his temple with her thumb. “What’s happening up here? You’ve been acting different for a few days now.”  
“This won’t make any sense, but—”  
“Why would it—”  
“Cassie, I’ve had a great time here. With you.” The words sound forced, even though they’re the truth.  
“Oh, no.” Her hand falls to her side.  
“I mean, I’m not usually the kind of guy who sticks around for second dates, much less… this. But you, Cassie Robinson, you are worth sticking around for, which is why I’m going to tell you something. You’re not going to believe me at first, but just hear me out. Just hear me out, okay?”  
Her eyes dart between his. “Okay.”  
“There’s a reason I’ve been dodging questions about my family. My dad, who I said was hunting around here, and I… well, we do hunt, but not ducks. We hunt ghosts. And monsters. Things people don’t believe exist.”  
She’s been trying so hard to give him her full attention, give him the benefit of the doubt, and he can see it fall apart in front of him. “What?”  
“My mom was killed in a fire when I was kid—I didn’t lie about that—but it was some kind of monster that caused the fire. Ever since then, my dad and I have been trying to find it, figure out what it is, and in the process we’ve found a whole bunch of other things that are trying to hurt people. So it’s kind of what we do.”  
She stares at him. “That’s the job you’ve been so cryptic about, the reason you’ve been everywhere in the country. Ghost hunting.”  
“Yeah, pretty much. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s all real. Ghosts, other spirits, werewolves, demons.”  
She’s still staring, and he realizes he’s losing her. She shakes her head, sliding away from him. “Okay, you’re right. It does sound crazy. If this is so top-secret, why are you telling me now?”  
“Because my dad called me yesterday and said we have a case to work down in Arkansas. I need to leave town tomorrow.”  
She scoffs incredulously. “You could’ve just told me you were skipping town, instead of coming up with this… insane story.”  
“Cassie—”  
She opens the car door and steps out, slamming it behind her. He scrambles out to intercept her on the sidewalk.  
“Please, Cassie, I’m not just trying to leave, I’m telling you the truth. I was hoping to come back after this hunt, actually, so we could… talk. More about this, or whatever.”  
She wipes her cheeks—maybe it’s raindrops, maybe it’s tears—but her voice is steady. “Dean, you are—this is nuts. I can’t do this.”  
He looks at the wet pavement, glistening in the street lights, and nods as the understanding dawns on him. “You were right to leave. Whatever we had, no matter how much I wanted it… It wouldn’t have ended well.”  
There’s sympathy in her expression. “You can’t have it both ways. You know that.”  
“Yeah.” He reaches up to push her hair behind her shoulder. “I’ve given up everything else for this job. I shouldn’t have been surprised it was you, too.”  
She smiles sadly, and he kisses her lightly on the lips. “Goodbye, Dean,” she says when they part. Then she turns away and disappears into the rain.  
When he sits back down in the car, there’s already someone in the passenger seat. Dean sighs.  
“You’re back.”  
Castiel is as unreadable as ever. “I haven’t seen this woman in your dreams before.”  
Dean shrugs. “I only dream about her every few months. Since I saw her again a few years ago, anyway. Usually, it’s some version of this night.” He watches rain run down the windshield and smiles vaguely. “Sometimes it’s waking up in her apartment in the morning. She always liked to sing in the shower, and she had a hell of a voice. ‘Course, I don’t know why I’m tell you any of this. Angels don’t have relationships, do they?”  
Castiel doesn’t look at him. “How much are you willing to sacrifice in order to save people, Dean?”  
Dean runs a hand through his hair, then wipes the rainwater off on his jeans. “I don’t know. What’s left to sacrifice?”  
“There is someone.”  
Dean looks over at him. “Sam? Oh, no. Fuck that. Call me selfish all you want, my brother isn’t dyin’ for anything. Not on my watch. I lost both my parents to this bullshit. I’m not losing Sam the same way.”  
“You loved this woman, Cassie, did you not? You gave her up.”  
“I—okay, well, that’s completely different. Cassie wasn’t family. I knew Cassie for a few weeks, that was it. Besides, she’s still alive, she’s fine. Sam’s my brother, it’s my job to protect him. We already talked about this. Why are you asking me about it anyway?”  
Cas takes a moment to answer. “I don’t know exactly what will happen in the coming months. Even with all the prophecies, even with all the planning Heaven has done for the end of times, we don’t know how this will play out. But it will not be easy on you or your brother.”  
“What part of our lives has ever been easy?” Dean shakes his head. “If I have to die in all this, that’s fine. Hell, I’m surprised I just saw my thirtieth birthday, and anyway, I’m supposed to be dead.” He glances over at Cas. “That’s the line, I guess. You asked what I’d be willing to sacrifice. My life? Sure. But not Sam’s.”  
Castiel’s eyes slide away from Dean’s. His presence is warm, as always, but it crackles with uncertainty now. Dean wonders if this is what it is to encounter the divine—superficial reassurance used to mask the disappointing reality underneath.  
Only he isn’t disappointed by Castiel—how could he be disappointed by something he never believed existed? He’s in a perpetual state of disbelief that this angel, however unlike the popular depiction with his trench coat and disheveled hair, gives enough of a shit about him to still be visiting his dreams.  
Dean reaches into the backseat and pulls a beer out of the cooler there. He pops the cap off the bottle, then pauses, looking at the label but not really seeing it.  
“Hm.” He gives Cas a dry half-smile. “I guess you’re the closest to Heaven I’ll ever get.”  
Cas cocks his head. “What makes you say that?”  
“I don’t have any illusions about where I’m headed when I die,” he says, gesturing dismissively with the beer bottle. “It’s not like there’s much about the way I’ve led my life that’s Heaven-worthy.”  
“That’s not entirely true.”  
Dean swallows a mouthful of beer and shoots Cas a skeptical look. “You tellin’ me I’m actually going to Heaven?”  
“I don’t know. Angels don’t decide where human souls go after life, nor can we know. Only God decides, and only the reapers know. And Death, I suppose.”  
“Death.” Dean shakes his head. “Of course.” After a pause, he straightens up and asks, “What’s it like? Heaven, I mean.”  
Castiel considers. “It’s different for angels than for humans. And it’s different for every human. For each human soul, it’s whatever they wanted most in life—whatever gives them contentment. For us, it’s just… space to move through.”  
“Well, that’s… shitty, but I guess I can’t really be surprised. So, you can’t know whether a soul is going to Heaven, but do you know which ones are already there?”  
“Many of them, yes. I’ve visited a few humans’ heavens. We aren’t allowed to interact with them, but we can observe.”  
“Do you know if… Is there a Mary Sandra Winchester in Heaven? Died in 1983?”  
Cas’s expression is soft. “Your mother is in Heaven, Dean.”  
“Right.” He exhales. “Just had to ask. You know.”  
There’s a silence between them that stretches long enough Dean starts to wonder why he hasn’t woken up yet, or why his dream hasn’t shifted as he enters a new stage of sleep.  
“Angels are not incapable of feeling,” Castiel says at last, “so much as forbidden from it. Humans abound with feelings. The warriors of Heaven cannot afford such weakness.”  
Dean meets his eyes, sensing momentum in his words.  
“I may not understand you, Dean Winchester, but I am also not the monster a part of you still believes me to be. Have a little… if not faith, then trust. Not everything is your enemy. Trust in the Lord, and He will act.”  
“That’s not exactly… not exactly how I was raised, Cas.”  
“That doesn’t make you incapable of it.”  
Dean runs his hand across the top of the steering wheel. “Show me that I can trust you, and I might be willing to trust your God.”_

× × ×

The werewolf bares its teeth, snarling, and stalks closer to Dean. Lit from behind by the lamp in the park, its oversized shadow stretches across the grass.  
Dean flips his machete in his hand. “Preying on those people in the trailer park, because they’re easy targets? Because no one will look for them? Your words, pal, not mine. That’s pretty low, even for a thing like you.”  
“And their hearts were delicious,” it says in a distorted version of the man’s voice it had in human form. “Drenched in cholesterol and alcohol.”  
Dean makes a face. “Gross.”  
The werewolf lunges, and he swings the machete. He catches it in the shoulder instead of the neck, and its full weight hits him a split-second later, knocking him to the ground. Its claws rake across his face and dig into his arm as he struggles to keep its snapping jaw away with the machete.  
Then the wolf freezes, and Dean feels a wet warmth spill onto his chest. The creature collapses on top of him, and he quickly shoves it off, rolling to his hands and knees. The front of his shirt is soaked by blood and sticking to his skin, and a wave of nausea comes and goes.  
“You good?” Sam asks, flicking blood off the silver blade.  
“Yeah.” He gets to his feet and shoves his machete back into its sheath, staring down at the werewolf. “An idea where to put the body?”  
“Under that bridge we went over on the way in?”  
“Good enough for me.”  
They wrap the body in a tarp and lug it back toward the Impala, Sam carrying it under the shoulders and Dean carrying its legs.  
“You know,” Sam says, his voice slightly strained, “watching what happened back there—I’m kind of surprised you survived a year hunting on your own.”  
“I was fine. I had everything under control.”  
They heave the body into the trunk with a grunt. “Sorta seemed like you needed me.”  
“Sammy?” Dean says, shutting the trunk. His brother looks up with feigned innocence. “Go fuck yourself.”  
Sam grins as they take their seats in the car. “Do you remember that time in Texas? We put a dead vampire in the trunk and forgot about it for three days.”  
“In July,” Dean groans. “I’ve smelled a lot of bad shit in my life, but that… that was _ripe._ ”  
“Good times.”  
They were en route to a collection of demon signs in southern Minnesota when they caught wind of a purebred werewolf preying on residents of a trailer park in Spencer, Iowa. In the past two weeks since Sam rejoined Dean on the road, they’ve been working with Bobby and Ellen to strengthen a network of hunters and get the word out about the threat of a coming apocalypse. The demons, they’ve decided, must have another way out of Hell, because even with the Devil’s Gate long since closed, the number of freak storms, cattle mutilations, and reported possessions has been climbing. And Cas tells him Lilith is breaking seals at an alarming rate—twenty-three down out of the sixty-six.  
Dean hasn’t told Sam about Castiel. He’s not sure why. Maybe it’s that “So, there’s this angel who visits me in my dreams” is a whack-job way to start a conversation, or maybe it’s that Sam has a different relationship with faith than Dean does, or maybe Dean just doesn’t want to bring it up until he has hard proof that Castiel exists and that he is what he says he is.  
“You have any visions while you were at Stanford?” Dean asks as he washes blood and dirt off his hands and forearms with the frigid water from the stream. “Visions?” Sam doesn’t look at him as he pats the dirt over the werewolf’s grave flat with a shovel.  
“Yeah, you know. Psychic stuff.”  
“Oh. Uh, no. Not since you killed Yellow-Eyes.”  
“Good.” They hike up the embankment to the car. “And you would tell me if you did, right?”  
“Of course. I haven’t had any of it, I swear. No headaches, no predicting the future, no… telekinesis or whatever.”  
Sam tosses the shovels into the trunk while Dean strips out of his bloodstained shirt and scrubs the dried blood off his chest with a washcloth. He made the mistake once of driving back to a motel without changing clothes after a hunt, and he had a lot of explaining to do to the cops when they stopped him for speeding. But it’s cold now, so even though he makes it fast, he’s shivering by the time he throws on a different shirt and his leather jacket on top.  
As they sit down in the Impala and Dean cranks on the heat, he notices Sam watching him.  
“You’re still worried about what Dad said before he died, aren’t you?” Sam asks.  
Dean pulls off the shoulder and heads north out of town. “I just… It seems too easy, doesn’t it? That all of that, whatever happened with the demon blood and the powers, just… goes away when Yellow-Eyes dies?”  
“I don’t know. I think it did, I want to believe it did.” Sam rests his elbow on the lip of the car window. “But I have to admit, sometimes I still feel something… dark inside me, some kind of anger. For no reason. And I haven’t acted on it, of course, it’s just… there, in the background.”  
The cold coursing through Dean now has nothing to do with the temperature. He keeps his expression in check to keep his emotions hidden from his brother, but he hoped Sam would refute it entirely, and in a way he could actually believe. As it is, he thinks Sam is downplaying whatever he’s feeling.  
It makes him want to drive off the face of the earth, into some other world where he could know, for once, that his job was done and his little brother was safe.  
“Well, Dad was wrong,” Dean says.  
Sam, as always, looks surprised to hear Dean oppose their father. “Really?”  
“I fuckin’ hate him for ever saying that to me.” His hand tightens on the steering wheel, the smooth leather pressing reassuringly into his palm. “My whole life, you know, it’s been my number-one job to protect you from—the world, and the better I followed Dad’s orders, the better I could do that. To have his dying request be to protect the world from you? If I could take that back, if I could’ve never heard him say that… I wish to God he’d just left it at ‘I’m proud of you,’ and ‘don’t be scared.’ That’s what dads are supposed to say.”  
“Dean… I know it’s not an easy thing to do—to even imagine doing, but we’ve talked about this, and you’ve promised me—”  
“Don’t.”  
“Why do you think I left hunting after the Devil’s Gate? Because after I saw what happened to the other people like me, after I shot Jake Talley in the back? I was afraid, Dean. Of myself.”  
“And why’s it got to be me, huh? Why does this shit always, always fall on me?”  
“Because I trust you,” Sam states. “And because no one else will do it.”  
Dean shakes his head.  
“I’m not saying it’ll happen. But if I can’t… if I can’t keep this under control…”  
“You’ll be fine, Sammy,” Dean says dismissively. He fixes Sam with a firm look. “Just keep me in the loop, okay? No secrets.”  
Sam looks over at him, then looks at his lap. “Okay,” he says quietly. “No secrets.”


End file.
